Dogstar- Hampstead Theatre
Up until a few months ago, I’d spent an entire life loathing the lore of polar exploration. Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton’s chilly endeavours had bored me throughout childhood and then soured over time. Blokey, egotistical, jingoistic nonsense dressed up as heroic propaganda and British pride. I was having none of it. There’s nothing brave about freezing to death ‘cause you wanna stick a Union Jack into an iceberg. Leave the Arctics alone, don’t drag the ocean floor, save the polar bears and CAN WE PLEASE stop the snow mountains from melting and flooding us into Armageddon?
After reading Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognita- Travels in Antarctica earlier this year, my perspective on the history of humanity’s polar bothering swung from eternally irritated to absolute...
